Inclusive Business in Action: Case Studies from ABERA Cohort 1 Financial and Agricultural Service Providers

Executive Summary

Agrifood systems are the largest source of employment in Sub-Saharan Africa and southern Asia. Among working people, 76 percent of women and 68 percent of men in Sub-Saharan Africa (FAO, NRI, and AWARD 2025) and 71 percent of women and only 47 percent of men in southern Asia (FAO 2023) have jobs in the agrifood sector. Yet women tend to work in the sector’s lower skill, lower wage, seasonal, and informal jobs. As climate risks intensify, the long-term success of businesses that serve or source from rural women hinges on the resilience of these women.

While World Bank Findex data shows that 73 percent of women in low- and middle-income economies now own financial accounts—just 5 percentage points behind men—this gap is wider in certain regions. In the Middle East and North Africa the gap is 15 percentage points. In some South Asian countries, the gap is even larger, reaching 30 percentage points in Pakistan and 20 percentage points in Bangladesh (Klapper et al. 2025). Among digital agricultural technology (agtech) solutions in Africa, for example, women comprise only 25 percent of registered users (Tsan et al. 2019).

These persistent gaps in service signal a significant business opportunity for financial and agricultural service providers that understand and tailor their services to rural women, especially in collaboration with other service providers. These services can make meaningful change in the lives and livelihoods of rural women, as well as concrete improvements to food security. Closing the gender gap in farm productivity and the wage gap in agrifood systems would increase global gross domestic product by 1 percent (or nearly US$1 trillion), thereby reducing global food insecurity by about 2 percentage points and the number of people who are food insecure by 45 million (FAO 2023).

Accelerating Business to Empower Rural Women in Agriculture (ABERA) is working to seize these opportunities, both for service providers and for rural women. A collaboration between CGAP and IDH, ABERA aims to improve the climate resilience of service providers and the rural women they serve by fostering commercially viable, climate-smart innovations in inclusive finance. It conducts deep-dive Inclusive Business Analyses (IBAs) that examine overall business performance, with particular attention to gender and climate, coupled with co-designing and delivering scalable innovations, fostering peer learning exchanges, and distilling and sharing insights. As a result, ABERA aims to generate data and experience that helps service providers and funders see their profit, gender, and climate goals as interdependent rather than mutually exclusive.

The initial analyses presented in this Working Paper share key insights from the IBAs conducted with five companies in ABERA’s first cohort of financial and agricultural service providers. These five cases provide tested, real-world insights, offering relevant guidance to other service providers:

• Avanti Finance in India is a digital platform collaborating with lenders, investors, and channel partners that have strong, on-the-ground presence in order to facilitate a paperless, presence-less, and cashless approach to lending. The IBA analysis highlights how loans can be digitally delivered to low-income customers while still protecting them and maintaining portfolio quality.
• BRAC Tanzania Finance Limited (BTFL) has the largest branch network and widest geographical presence among microfinance institutions (MFIs) in Tanzania. BTFL provides affordable loans to women in rural and hard-to-reach areas and is using its IBA analysis to design an agrifinance loan product designed to better serve women smallholder farmers living in poverty and help build women’s climate resilience.
• Hello Tractor in Kenya is an agtech company that provides internet of things (IoT)-enabled solutions that help smallholder farmers access and utilize farm equipment to optimize farm productivity. The IBA analysis highlights the business implications of working around gender norms, such as employing and then retaining rural women as booking agents and tractor operators.
• Samunnati is India’s largest agri-enterprise, providing an Aggregation, Market Linkage, and Advisory (AMLA) approach in its agrifinance and agri-commerce solutions. The IBA analysis explores how Samunnati can leverage women’s income diversification as an entry point into climate-smart agriculture.
• Sistema.bio in India is a biodigester solution company that helps smallholder farmers meet their domestic energy and biofertilizer needs. The IBA analysis illustrates the practicalities of leveraging carbon credits to reduce the cost of biodigesters to businesses and rural women.

In the initial IBAs of ABERA’s first cohort of financial and agricultural service providers, several important themes and lessons emerged, emphasizing innovation, practicality, and results for both rural women and businesses. The following points summarize the most significant findings to date, offering a high-level view of the opportunities and innovations shaping inclusive business in agriculture.

Inclusive business models unlock untapped value. Moving beyond conventional approaches and service delivery, companies are intentionally designing products and services for rural women and reworking their internal structures and policies. This range of approaches and solutions—digital-first lending platforms, gender sensitization training for staff and partners, and tailored financial products—are expanding access for women and driving measurable business outcomes such as improved customer retention and reduced operational risk. These efforts show rural women as viable economic actors whose engagement drives both commercial viability and climate resilience.

Seven practical business drivers emerge as key to success. The initial IBAs reveal seven business drivers that consistently strengthen both business performance and women’s climate resilience:

1. Women’s groups
2. Male allyship
3. Income diversification
4. Access to productive assets
5. Digital tools
6. Inclusive delivery strategies
7. Data for insights.

Companies are adapting these drivers to fit different market contexts and customer segments, and their interplay is central to unlocking mutual value (Were et al. 2025).

Localization, capacity building, and partnerships amplify reach and impact. Companies that adapt their strategies to local context, considering social norms, market realities, and customer needs, are better positioned to achieve client impact as well as commercial viability. By investing in capacity building (e.g., building business, digital, and technical skills for women), companies ensure that rural women can effectively adopt their products and services. Partnerships with intermediaries, cooperatives, and local organizations are also essential for reaching rural women, delivering services, and building trust at scale.

These initial IBAs set in motion innovations from financial and agricultural service providers designed to better reach and serve women with business-driven solutions that improve their livelihoods and resilience to climate change. They also illustrate how tailored financial services add value for both rural women and for the service providers.